13.000 people refused to donate organs after death

Hundreds of people come daily to the Civil Registr to renew or ask its identity cards

During 2012, about 534,017 citizens obtained their identity cards in the Civil Registry of Guayas. Of this number, about 13,000 chose not to be organ donors,

Despite the enactment of the Law on Donation and Transplantation of organs, tissues and cells, which states that “every Ecuadorian and foreign legal residents in the country, over eighteen years, at death, will become donors unless in life have expressed the contrary.”

Maria Candela Ceballos, head of the Transplant Unit of the Luis Vernaza Hospital, believes that the Government should educate citizens about the donation in order to save more lives. “Laws can be written, but people do not know them.”

According to articles 30 and 31, is mandatory that the General Directorate of the Civil Registry ask the citizens over 18 years old the manifestation of their will about becoming an organ donor and register it in  the respective identification.

The website of the National Institute for Donation and Transplantation of organs, tissues and cells, (www.indot.gob.ec), ensures that in the country there has been an increase in the donation rate of 2.2 donors per million inhabitants in 2011 to 3.7  donors in 2012.

According to INDOT, 563 interventions were made (liver, kidney, cornea, bone and other tissues) and in 2011 there were 443. It is emphasized that from these procedures 70 were corneas with local donors.